Third night of protests by Belarusians

Thousands of Belarusians demonstrated in a central Minsk square for the third night in a row tonight, swelling the ranks of a core group who spent the previous night there to protest at the extension of authoritarian President Alexander Lukashenko’s rule.

Opposition leader Alexander Milinkevich, who has denounced as a fraud the election that gave Lukashenko a new five-year term and called for a new vote, urged demonstrators to keep up daily protests and called for a major show of strength on Saturday.